From: terje.mathisen@tmsw.no   
      
   John Levine wrote:   
   > According to Stephen Fuld  :   
   >>> existing compilers supported it.  He claimed that there   
   >>> must be hardware support to make it widely available.  He somewhat   
   >>> ignored fact that even with hardware support there still needs   
   >>> to be support in compilers.   
   >>   
   >> Or perhaps (again, no personal knowledge - just speculation) that   
   >> supporting an additional data type in the IBM COBOL (and, for what its   
   >> worth PL/1) compilers is easier if there was hardware support for it.   
   >   
   > Having written a few compilers, I can say that it is equally easy   
   > within epsilon to emit a DFADD instruction as the equivalent of CALL   
   > DFADD. I could believe it's politically easier, hey we'll look dumb if   
   > we announce this swell DFP feature and our own compilers don't use it.   
      
   Back in the FDIV bug days, the workaround code I did most of the writing   
   on simply replaced all FDIV opcodes with a CALL FDIVFIX, none of the   
   compiler teams found that to be any problem at all. For most it was   
   probably just a patch to the code output table?   
      
   Terje   
      
   --   
   -    
   "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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